Packages can be installed with brew install <packagename> and updated with brew update.

Packages I generally install on a new Mac are:

wget – for command line downloading

imagemagick – for image manipulation

mas – for command line updating of (non-Apple) App Store software

youtube-dl – for downloading youtube videos for offline viewing

Once you have homebrew installed then it’s possible to script a software update solution that includes all Apple software, all non-Apple software, and everything installed through homebrew. It’s not quite as good as a Linux package manager, but it’s getting there.